[Anthill] Exception when getting revisions

[sbarber at randomwalk.com]

Eric,

I have this (or a very similar) problem also.

I've actually investigated it to some degree, though unfortunately I don't
have a general fix for you. But I think I can point you in the right
direction.

The problem lies in the way environment variables are passed to the SS
subprocess. Anthill OS uses a different mechanism for getRevisionsSince
than it does for checkouts. If you look at the code, you'll see that
com.urbancode.anthill.adapter.VSSRepositoryAdapater.getRevisionsSince()
calls Runtime.exec() directly and in doing so creates a new and very
restricted DOS environment with only a few variables. However, the
checkout operation uses (IIRC)
com.urbancode.anthill.adapter.ProfileRepositoryAdapater.getWorkingProjectCopy,
which uses the overrided executeCommand() method in VSSRepositoryAdapter,
which in turn uses com.urbancode.anthill.util.Execute.executeCommand(),
which is what calls Runtime.exec() *without* specifying an environment and
thus inherits the environment of the anthill process. Again, I don't know
what the fix is, but I note that there's enough difference here to explain
the varying results and am convinced that the fix will lie in this area.

A couple more data points: in my experiments, when a repository dir is
passed via the config file, the  checkout works, but the getRevisionsSince
doesn't. When I fooled around with specifying the SSDIR directly in the
pagelets and not the config file, I could get the getRevisions to work,
but not the checkout! Or something like that. There's also something going
on with the way the env variables end up being quoted by the interactions
between the pagelet code and the various ways of Runtime.exec() used.

Hope this helps!!

-Steve Barber
sbarber at randomwalk.com

> Matt,
>
> Thanks for all the great information. This problem was actually reported
> earlier this morning. I'm going to look through the code a bit here. You
> mentioned the dos prompt, so I'm curious if you are running your web
> container as your own user or as a service.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Eric
>
> Matt Corey wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am getting an error with the VSSRepositoryAdapter in AntHill OS
>> version 1.7 – the exact error and stack trace is listed below. What is
>> especially odd about this case is that all other interaction with VSS
>> works fine – it is able to get the latest version of all files, and it
>> is even able to check out the version file and check it back in
>> successfully. Getting the revision list is the only problem I’m
>> having, and of course it causes the build itself to fail.
>>
>> I have also executed the command that it prints out in the log at a
>> DOS prompt, and it works fine (correctly reports any changes,
>> including if there are none). If anyone has any insight into this
>> problem, it would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> M
>>
>> 14:02:41:589 [Thread-98] ERROR STDERR - No VSS database (srcsafe.ini)
>> found. Use the SSDIR environment variable or run netsetup.
>>
>> 14:02:41:651 [Thread - AnthillBuildDaemon] ERROR
>> com.urbancode.anthill.BuildManager - Exception when getting revisions.
>>
>> com.urbancode.anthill.adapter.RepositoryException: Exception when
>> getting revisions.
>>
>> at
>> com.urbancode.anthill.adapter.VSSRepositoryAdapter.getRevisionsSince(VSSRepositoryAdapter.java:211)
>>
>> at
>> com.urbancode.anthill.BuildManager.requiresBuild(BuildManager.java:345)
>>
>> at com.urbancode.anthill.BuildManager.build(BuildManager.java:111)
>>
>> at
>> com.urbancode.anthill.AnthillProject.releaseProject(AnthillProject.java:231)
>>
>> at com.urbancode.anthill.BuildDefinition.run(BuildDefinition.java:158)
>>
>> at com.urbancode.anthill.BuildDaemon.run(BuildDaemon.java:73)
>>
>> ***Matt Corey*
>>
>> Senior Programmer
>>
>> WURLD media, inc.™
>>
>> Tel: 518.691.1100
>>
>> Fax: 518.691.1165
>>
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>>
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>>
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>>
>>
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